'Shaman Pass' a worthy follow-up
It's a cold winter day in the fictional Northwest Arctic village of Chukchi, and the body of Victor Solomon has been found near his ice fishing camp - impaled by an antique wood and carved ivory spear that's more than 100 years old.
Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active has to solve the murder, a crime that also includes the theft of the spear, a mummified body recently returned to Chukchi by the Smithsonian, and an ivory amulet carved in the shape of a snowy owl.

Hardware superstore opens its doors today
Four months after Family Grocer vacated its retail space in the Airport Shopping Center, Alaska Industrial Hardware is opening its doors there today.
"We officially took control of the building Feb. 1, and in 90 days we have completely remodeled the inside," said Dennis Watson, the Juneau store manager for Alaska Industrial Hardware, a company based in Anchorage.

War is not ultimate evil
A few weeks ago the Yukon capital Whitehorse proclaimed itself a "city of peace." The city council voted 6-1 to approve a resolution that had been brought to them by the Yukon Peace Coalition.

Fashion statements?
I drive a school bus and some of the students I transport are high school students. Today two high school girls boarded my bus in what I would never consider appropriate attire for school.

Alyeska's support
I take exception to the premise that Alyeska Central School duplicates services provided by homeschool support programs. How can two programs, one where the student-teacher ratio is 60 to 1 and another where the ratio is 800 to 1 offer the same advantages?

This Day in History
In 1958, a Juneau man drove away a young black bear by kicking it in the rump.

Junker dilemma
Thom Buzard, a maintenance department employee at Wright Services, has been doing battle with Juneau's junk cars. And he isn't winning.
"I am dealing with a car right now that is literally teetering on the edge of a rock in a very crowded trailer park," he said last week. "To look at it, you know it's a junk car. The engine and transmission are missing, the tires are gone, the glass has been broken and the kids were playing around it. It's basically an environmental hazard."

Assembly to eye USA Patriot Act
The Juneau Assembly will consider a revised resolution Monday night that compels city employees to take a cautious approach to federal inquiries under the USA Patriot and Homeland Security acts.
"We normally think twice before releasing private and confidential information. This resolution will require us to think three times," said City Attorney John Corso.

Managers named at Glory Hole
The executive director of the downtown Juneau homeless shelter is leaving and is being replaced by the former executive director of the Juneau Symphony.
Lance Young, 47, has directed the Glory Hole since March 2002. He was passing through Juneau in 1999 on his way "up north" from Kansas, and turned the stop into a four-year sojourn. He is resuming his journey on Tuesday.
"I'm going to start at Homer; that's where I was headed four years ago," Young said.

Pride in the city moves volunteers
Amid the hustle and bustle of downtown Juneau in the summertime, friendly faces of Juneau residents are ready to welcome visitors to Alaska's capital. Many of the faces are those of Juneau Convention and Visitor Bureau volunteers - more than 150 people who "make Juneau shine," as the JCVB slogan states.
"Our people are really proud of Juneau," said Carol Scafturon, director of visitor services for the JCVB. She and Jennifer Lockwood, volunteer coordinator at the bureau, recruit, train and schedule volunteers so visitors won't miss the personalized experience the volunteers offer.

Mine hopes to spread out tailings area
A proposed expansion of the Greens Creek Mine's tailing disposal area could keep the mine running for 25 more years. But it might need the addition of carbon to keep metals from leaching into the ground and the water, according to a draft environmental impact statement released Friday.
Operators of Greens Creek, an underground polymetallic mine on Admiralty Island that employs about 260 people, want to expand its tailings disposal area to accommodate more ore reserves. Tailings are what's left of the material removed from the mine after the metal has been extracted.

Carmen (DeRoux) Waldal Utt
She was born Carmen Jane Waldal in Seattle, Wash., on June 14, 1925. Her parents, Elsie DeRoux and Hjalmar Waldal moved three months later to the Juneau area, where her grandfather operated an asbestos mine on Admiralty Island.

My Turn: Patriot Act threatens fundamental freedoms guaranteed in Bill of Rights
We need to support Senate Joint Resolution No. 15 and House Joint Resolution No. 22. U.S. troops have been asked to fight for freedom and democracy - protecting our freedom and democracy at home, but also helping to give freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. However, when the USA Patriot Act was passed, Congress gave the executive branch sweeping new powers that undermined our Bill of Rights.

Empire editorial: Graduated license bill will save lives
Nearly everyone has high school memories of a tragedy involving classmates who were involved in car crashes resulting in personal injury or loss of life. Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch relates his own experience of totaling two family vehicles during his high school years.

My Turn: War supporters gullible, partisan
Like Tony Tengs, I'm more than weary of war supporters asserting that any position other than bovine support for Bush's war is somehow unpatriotic or unsupportive of American service people. But perhaps I can add a somewhat different perspective.

What do you think?
I live in South Dakota where we have video lottery. What we have seen in our area is a proliferation of pawn shops and a rise in crimes of embezzlement. According to addiction counselors, video lottery is the crack cocaine of gambling. Many people wish we had never started this business because of the social problems it has created, but we are so addicted to the money that we will never get rid of it.

Dinner on the fly
Falconers in Alaska face some unusual perils. Falconers hunt with trained raptors, but in Alaska, sometimes the hunter becomes the prey.
"In one case a bald eagle caught, killed and ate one of my birds, a peregrine falcon," said Juneau falconer Ron Clarke.

A spring king thing
Last year's Spring King Salmon Derby champion David Julian predicts a big May for this year's derby, since he already has caught about 10 kings in the past month.
"I've caught some large fish," said Julian, who was unwilling to divulge the exact weight. "I caught one that was 44 inches."
The seventh annual Spring King Salmon Derby sponsored by Tlingit-Haida Central Council begins Thursday and runs through the end of the month. Tickets cost $30, with all proceeds going toward higher-education scholarships for Natives.

Lena Point trail offers views, history
Starting in 1990, volunteers from the Juneau Gastineau Rotary Club took on development of the Lena Point Natural Area Park and Trail as a community service project.
The city received title to this federal property June 10, 1994. At that time, wildlife, local kids and others used a shoreline trail to the point, and the Taku Conservation Society's trail crew and volunteers made a few improvements soon after the property was acquired. Now, it is a quiet natural area in urban Juneau and well-used by the neighborhood.

Skyview Invitational
Results from the Skyview Invitational track and field meet held Friday and Saturday at Skyview High School in Soldotna. There were 21 high schools scheduled to compete in the meet, but only 18 were listed in the results. First names were not available for all athletes, and relay team runners were not available for non-Juneau teams.

Play Ball!
It would be hard to imagine a surer sign of the impending summer.
Saturday was opening day for Gastineau Channel Little League - a warm, sunny, glorious day - and hundreds of players - assembled team by team - took those first few magical, crunchy steps onto the freshly groomed glacial silt and newly marked chalk of the Adair-Kennedy Memorial Park field.

Juneau girls third, boys fifth at Skyview
Rachel Chenoweth made her hurdles debut this season a successful one, winning the 300-meter low hurdles to lead the Juneau-Douglas High School girls track team to a third-place finish in the Skyview Invitational held Friday and Saturday at Soldotna's Skyview High School.
Chenoweth, a senior who finished third in the state in the event last year, posted a time of 49.16 seconds to beat Nikiski's Svenja Lau by more than a second. While the time was off Chenoweth's personal record of 47.26 from last year's state meet, she said she was happy with the performance.

Unraveling history
George Gustav Heye, a wealthy New Yorker born in 1874, was a compulsive collector of American Indian artifacts. He would visit Indian reservations and be anxious and irritable until he'd bought everything in sight. He sponsored digs. He bought out other collectors. By the time he died, his collection had grown to 800,000 items.
Some people who knew him said he didn't seem to care about individual Indians or about keeping their cultures alive.

Senate finance panel sends $2.3 billion budget to floor
Senate Republicans on the Finance Committee crafted a budget Friday that would draw more from the state's Constitutional Budget Reserve than Gov. Frank Murkowski had asked, and provide more money for public schools and the University of Alaska.
The $2.3 billion budget will be on the floor of the Senate for debate on Monday, said Senate President Gene Therriault.

Troopers: Chapel-shooting investigation could take weeks
BIG LAKE - The investigation into the shooting deaths of two suspected burglars by a pastor at a Big Lake Church will take as long as several weeks, according to the top Alaska State Trooper in Palmer.
Troopers are gathering information and waiting for complete autopsy and toxicology reports, Capt. Dennis Casanovas said Friday.

Photo: Low overhead
The 27-foot single-masted sailboat Freya, from Sitka, made an unexpected stop under the Alaskan Way Viaduct on Friday in Seattle. Police say the Western Cartage driver underestimated the 13-foot plus clearance height of the underpass by as much as a foot.

Sen. Murkowski plans to push for tax credit
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told state lawmakers Friday she will introduce bills in Washington to fund teacher housing in the Bush and give tax credits for stay-at-home parents.
It is Murkwoski's first address to the Legislature since she was appointed to the position in December by her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski.